Players
A Roleplaying Overview This scenario, and the Speculation system, is a "roleplaying game." This experience is similar to improv acting: the player assumes a role, is given a situation, then acts and reacts to the prompts as if it were real. As actor Ted Danson once explained, it's "pretending, while pretending you're not pretending." In the case of a roleplaying game, the actors act and react within character – but when they say they're taking some specific action, there are rules to determine the success or failure of that attempt. This scenario takes improvising a step further, simulating a very specific situation, with defined expectations and objectives balanced out by particular hazards and dangers. This scenario also assumes that characters (and the players acting through them) have had a specific type of training. Instead of allowing themselves to simply and naturally react, these characters are expected to respond. CERT team members may "only" be volunteers, but they are trained Emergency Responders. In a disaster, when professional emergency response is overwhelmed, volunteers may be the only responders for 24, 48, or 72 hours... or longer. CERT volunteers can and will save lives. Technical Play Gaming is one of the four methods of discussion-based exercises identified in the US Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP). An exercise facilitator can take any source material, set the scope and parameters of the scenario, determine SMART objectives for the session, then bring in the referee and the players. A game-based environment allows the players to relax, accept the artificialities of the system, then work through the situations as presented. This may be entirely within the "theater of the mind," it may have maps, photos or drawings of particular locations, or there may be scale-model mock-ups that allow a more detailed tactical exercise. With Subject Matter Experts in the roles of referee, players, observers and evaluators, roleplaying can be used forensically, as a tool for investigation or for Root Cause Analysis. Playing Through This Scenario Players looking to participate in the Great California ShakeOut CERT Scenario will need to create characters, in-game versions of themselves that they'll pilot through a technical narrative. If a player has ever played any kind of role-playing game, they'll be ahead of the curve on this portion. For those who haven't, consider this a kind of choose-your-own adventure novel except they're creating a story with the help of the referee and their fellow players. This scenario utilizes the [https://speculation.fandom.com/wiki/Speculation_Wiki Speculation roleplaying system], which is a set of rules for resolving hypothetical situations. The capabilities of the character are compared to the difficulty of specific challenges, modifiers and a little luck are added, and the numbers are compared. If the character's skill is higher than the challenge, then they successfully complete the task. The [https://speculation.fandom.com/wiki/CC_Background character-creation system] is designed to build a fully-formed "character", beginning with a background and moving through a comprehensive metric of their physical and mental traits. For this scenario, players will be assuming characters of average-but-trained civilian capacity and skill, at least in relation to an emergency response context. A Session versus a Campaign This is a complex scenario that simulates a detailed 18-hour period immediately following a disaster, including a 12-hour local deployment to run a light search and rescue operation. As such, if played to maximum detail – especially for training and/or assessment – the entire end-to-end experience would likely extend longer than a single session would permit. If played as a one-off, especially if focused strictly on the operation, then complex backgrounds aren't necessary. Players can rely on the civilian templates provided and they'll be perfectly able to operate within the scope of their training. Running a series of operations would make this a "campaign," a situation where a more complex background would be useful. Consider that the characters, and theoretically the people behind them, will need to factor in dealing with issues like Operational Stress, injuries, exhaustion and potential complications from PTSD. Category:Players